m.

In 359 the Emperor Constantius assembled the council of Rimini, a city
of Central Italy. Six hundred bishops and a number of priests now undo
all that the council of Nice had done. This council was as accommodating
to Arian Constantius as to the Trinitarian Constantine. Constantius,
forsaking the Trinitarian system, adopted Arianism, and Greeks and
Latins complied with the imperial wishes, and, like dutiful subjects,
signed the Arian and semi-Arian confessions of Sirneium, Seleucia, Milan
and Ariminum. The western and eastern prelacy subscribed in compliance
with their sovereign to the Arian creed, which, as Du Pin has shown, was
signed by his infallibility, Pope Liberius.

Next in our programme comes Theodosius I., assembling a council of one
hundred and fifty bishops at Constantinople in the year 381. Theodosius
was a zealous Catholic; he was baptized before the end of the first
year of his reign, and immediately published an edict in support of the
doctrine of the Trinity, branding all who did not hold it as heretics.
His council was presided over by St. Gregory Nazianzen. The chief work
of this council was to anathematise the Council of Rimini, which was
composed of six hundred bishops and a multitude of priests. This work
was done, and so one hundred and fifty bishops curse and denounce as
heretical and false six hundred bishops and a multitude of priests; so
the voice of the many is not always the voice of God, nor yet the voice
of a council the voice of a Pope; neither is the infallibility of a Pope
always found in a council, nor is the infallibility of one Pope always
found in the voice of another.

Theodosius II. convened a council in 431. Nestorius, bishop of
Constantinople, seems to have been the cause of this convocation, having
persecuted all who were not of his opinions; now undergoes persecution
for having plead that the Holy Virgin Mary was not the mother of God. He
plead that Jesus Christ being the word, _consubstantial_ with the
Father, Mary could not, at the same time, be the mother of God the
Father and of God the Son. To settle this quarrel Nestorius demands a
council and obtains it. This council condemned Nestorius, and one of its
committees displaced Cyril. The Emperor, Theodosius II., reversed all
that was done, and then permitted it to reassemble. The deputies from
Rome, John, Patriarch of Antioch, with twenty-six suffragans, arrived
five days after the transaction, and it is on record tha